There is etiquette to the end of NBA games — if your team is going to win you don’t celebrate with a dunk or three, you dribble it out, hand the ball to the referee and walk off.

The Sixers were up 109-104 on the Lakers with about five seconds left in the game Sunday when the Lakers missed a shot and the Sixers tapped the ball out to midcourt. Decorum suggests just dribbling it out.

i like turner. now on to the lakers.. man how do you lose to really bad teams like the jazz and 76ers? youre probably a bad team yourself. if youre gonna lose, go all the way and please get a good player from the draft!

@JMClarkent – The Lakers are doing much better than I thought they would be this season. I’m fairly impressed with how well they’ve played. I didn’t think they had a shot at the playoffs before the season began, but they’re holding up well.

No, there is not an etiquette. there is an expectation from sportswriters.

In the NBA there are entirely too many voices telling teams to lose and not try hard and get better next year. What situations like Charlotte show us is that you don’t lose to get better. losing just creates a culture of losing. trying to win games turns marginal players into stars nobody saw coming. Enough of this etiquette/WHY IS THAT SPORTS PLAYER TRYING TO WIN THE GAME HE IS PLAYING?/ nonsense. play whistle to whistle and try to win. sucking on purpose doesn’t work if everyone else is doing it.

i see your points but its just how the nba is. its a star driven league and if you can get a cornerstone franchise player in the draft, your team COULD be set for 10-15 years. SAS has been good because they got the first pick in duncan and hes their face. sure they drafted well and got other good pieces but he is the cornerstone. same with durant, lebron in cleveland, dwight in orlando, etc. charlotte couldve been good before but they drafted SO bad. theyre only okay now because the East is so putrid.

Your statement is absurd on its face. Dirk, Steve Nash and likely but TBD Paul George are guys who had impacts that NO ONE saw coming. Gimme a break with this tank to draft some 18 year old who may or may not work out. For all of the hype about Wiggins to start the season he looks fairly pedestrian. Hype and losing go hand in hand.

Putting a quality team and coaching staff and player development personnel around Turner or Kemba or AD or [insert here] is a much better strategy than losing for 9 months in the hope of getting a savior. Paul George was DEVELOPED on purpose. James Harden was DEVELOPED on purpose. Jeremy Lamb and the other kid from BC are being DEVELOPED on purpose.

@moseskkim – Tanking is ridiculous! First of all you have no guarantee of a player working out at the top of the draft. There are usually only two or three out of the top five that usually pan out, and not all of them become franchise cornerstones at that.

Secondly, the Spurs didn’t just “luck” into getting Duncan and win automatically. They surrounded him with the right players. That takes talent evaluators and a plan. Look at Indiana. Do you think that is luck? That’s a well built team. There’s a reason that teams like The Wizards and other teams that routinely get top picks and go nowhere, while teams that draft modestly tend to end up on top of the NBA. Getting lucky in the draft doesn’t automatically mean you’ll succeed!

Third, the Lakers most recent NBA championships in the 90’s and 2000’s were primarily built through Free Agents. Even Kobe was acquired via draft day trade. He was drafted 13 by the Hornets and came to the Lakers via the Vlade Divac trade. Shaq was a Free Agent. Robert Horry = trade. Pau Gasol = trade. Just about the only Laker regular that was via the draft was Derek Fisher.

So when you talk about tanking, keep my points in mind! Teams that tank typically are due to lazy and mismanaged front offices who have no ability to evaluate talent in the first place. The Lakers know what they’re doing and don’t need to tank to be successful! With that being said, signing Kobe for the $$$ they did will probably keep them out of the hunt for a ring for the next few years.

mytthor - Jan 1, 2014 at 1:49 PM

No, there is an etiquette. Which is patently obvious to anyone paying attention, since 2 seconds after the dunk he was apologizing profusely to everyone in a Lakers uniform, and some of them were still visibly upset. This has nothing to do with trying to win, unless you though the lakers were going to foul and then shoot a 9-pointer at the buzzer,

Evan Turner isn’t the type of guy who would try to show up another team like that. With 10-15 seconds left, it makes sense to try to score the ball again, even when you’re up 5. See: Reggie Miller’s 8 points in 13 seconds to beat the Knicks in the playoffs. I’m sure nick young wasn’t too pleased, he was teammates with turner a couple of years ago. Definitely a “c’mon man” moment, but definitely an honest mistake.

The “honest mistake” I refer to was Turner not knowing how much time was left on the clock. If he really thought there was a decent amount of time left, his play makes sense. Which is what he indicated happened.

It wasn’t that bad, they were only up 5, and were able to play keep away, so the lakers were unable to foul. Its not like they were simply running out the clock during the play. Besides, he apologized immediately.

In don’t care how little time is left, if you’re up only 5 and you can score the ball, then you should score the ball. There may be a etiquette border somewhere by which it would be unsportsmanlike, but it sure isn’t 5 points.

I’m a Lakers fan and saw the Evan Turner dunk at the end of the game. It was awesome! If the Lakers don’t want Turner to dunk, then do something about it: Hustle back and play defense! It’s not Turner’s responsibility to defend himself. That belongs to the Lakers. So, stop the whining and crying and defend your house!

The real insult was the Lakers losing to the Sixers, not the dunk. There were Sixers fans at the game also, and watching on TV. So, while some Lakers~and fans may not have liked it, that dunk was for HIS fans, not ours. And I respect that. And unlike the Lakers, Turner played until the end. No need to apologize, Dude.

With the Eagles beating America’s most popular pro football team, the Dallas Cowboys, and the Sixers beating America’s most popular pro basketball team, it was the perfect punctuation for Philly sports fans.

The fans pay to see an entire game, and not 5 seconds less. They don’t sell discount tickets for seeing players quit before the buzzer sounds, so why should we expect discount play?

The biggest mistake the Lakers have made this season was extending Kobe Bryant’s contract when they could have given him all the money they wanted to when he retired! Why tie up the salary cap? Kobe could have waited two more years and got a going-away gift of $48.5 million.

My Lakers and their management SUCK right now. Maybe in 3 years once Kobe is gone we can FINALLY rebuild~unless they give him another $48 million contract at 38 years old which wouldn’t surprise me. SMH!~